NLP Content and Process
Like physical exercise NLP is a discipline that requires perseverance. What we develop through NLP is a series of positive attitudes, rather than the ability to parrot scripts and phrases. Yet structured content is the necessary starting gate through which we gain the skills and knowledge that make up NLP’s true value.
A) Steps in an NLP Intervention
The following is a recommended sequenced approach practitioners can use to assist clients in accomplishing their goals.
Beginning Frame
The frank establishment of any rules, expectations, and boundaries involved in conducting an intervention or working relationship to avoid future misunderstanding – If you’re heading on a group expedition it’s recommended that you’re working from the same map!
The most important things to say may often be those we think of as being too obvious to need saying. In NLP we question and draw attention to the assumptions and expectations that our clients, and we ourselves, bring into an engagement.
State
Triggering the appropriate mood for a context through physical change or mental preparation. In NLP we train clients to manage their state through the careful replaying of memories, adjustments in their physiology (posture, walk, hand gestures), and by addressing any unhelpful beliefs they may have regarding their performance.
We also train clients to recognise their own habits and the effect these may have upon on the states of those they interact with.
Outcome
Often the goals that we state in our professional lives differ from those that are truly important to us as rounded human beings. In NLP we help clients to phrase their outcomes in the most exciting and genuine terms.
What is most important in NLP is that goals can be articulated in sensory terms. This ensures that a goal is grounded in the physical world and has emotional resonance. The purpose of a goal is to set a direction which is motivating. We are likely to refine the route and end point many times along our journey.
Rapport
An honest connection and open communication between two or more people. There are many types of rapport and they all have their advantages and disadvantages; If you want to connect fully to a person a state of rapport is appropriate, whereas if you don’t want to be influenced by somebody it is best to break rapport.
A basic exercise for exploring rapport in NLP is the natural process of ‘Matching and Mirroring’. People that click with one another often begin to display similar postures, gestures and language traits. It is common in courses to play with matching each other’s behaviours to show how this changes the depth of our communication.
Current Strategy
Understanding what you’re doing now to achieve, or to sabotage, your goals. It’s about being able to elicit information and the ability to determine the detailed sensory sequence that people go through in performing their every day actions.
In NLP we teach clients a set of questions to uncover the often unconscious processes that they go through in completing any behaviour or task.
Technique or Task
What will take you from where you are now to where you want to get to?
NLP provides numerous tools for helping a client acquire any internal and external resources required to achieve an outcome. You can read more about NLP techniques here.
Future Pace
An imagination exercise that develops a detailed connection between the session and the action needed in the real world to bring about the desired action.
Imagining carrying out the next smallest activity that, when successfully completed, will move you forward towards your goal is a key action in achieving excellent results.
End Frame
Concluding and closing an interaction in reference to the issues raised in the beginning frame. It reinforces the positive elements of the session in a way that clients are likely to remember and put into action. While you are closing this particular interaction it is important to emphasise that the learning will continue out in the real world.
B) Other key NLP elements
These factors are of importance throughout all stages of an intervention.
Values
A label for that which is important to you at a core level. These may be very different to corporate values. They can tend to be generalised and superficial. A discussion of a client’s values will make it easier for them to connect with what’s important to them.
Value Rules
These define the criteria by which your values are met in the outside world. In NLP we ask clients to explore what has to happen for their values to be met in real life. Let us say, for example, that a client says that a key value for them is ‘trust’, we would get them to explore the similarities and differences in a situation in which they felt trust, and one in which they did not.
The more they consciously understand what is needed to meet that value, the easier it will be to achieve it.
Beliefs
An underlying assumption about the world which either helps or hinders you in achieving some outcome. NLP training will enable you to explore ways of changing your beliefs when you decide it is in your interest to do so.
Senses and Sub-modalities
All of our knowledge and experience is acquired and organised through our senses. Understanding how we react to those experiences is key for personal change.
In NLP our senses are sight, hearing, feeling, taste and smell. Submodalities are identifiable qualities of these senses – so light and dark are submodalities of sight.
One NLP technique for coping with unpleasant and hindering memories is to change the way they present themselves within our minds. For example, we may ask clients to change the colour of their memory, to push it into the distance, or to make any voices comical. This then changes the effect it has upon their state,potentially turning a once unpleasant memory into something neutral or
even funny.
Hypnotic Language
In NLP training you will learn to unlock creativity and gently lead through language borrowed from the world of hypnotherapy.
Time
NLP can assist in exercises that help to look at events and experiences from different points in time and perspectives of time, which is very valuable in planning and rehearsing for the future.
Stories
Stories have a unique structure which conveys complex information about ideas, states and strategies very effectively through stimulating both our conscious and unconscious thinking.
Your NLP training will enable you to construct and deliver stories to deliver the messages designed to achieve your outcomes.
Profiles
In NLP, ‘Meta Programs’ are used as a way of predicting a person’s general preferences for relationships to people and events. They can be used to increase rapport, influence and persuasion.
Modelling
This is the heart of NLP: the process of systematically coding and transferring attitudes and strategies from one person to another. Emulating characteristics that successful people have shown in order to get results in defined areas – combining both logical and intuitive approaches. You will learn a variety of modelling approaches on an NLP course.
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NLP Training – Content and Process